Write on.

Amie WiseleyJune 25, 2015

Abigail Thomas is a writer. I stumbled upon her books on Amazon – and with so many good reviews – I had to immediately put her books on hold at the library. Two of them sat at my bedside table untouched for well over a month.

I just opened one of them this morning. She hooked me by the first page or two. The book is: Thinking About Memoir.

One of the exercises she tells her students to do is to write about a ten year block of your life within 2 pages and each sentence can only be three words. Just three words.

When you’re done, if one of the sentences sparks fire crackers – start right there – start writing again but from that opener.

This is good stuff, this is making me feel happy and light. I have not felt super happy and light lately. I remember this feeling, I love it.

Woah… my brain just got hijacked by an interruption and almost didn’t come back. Matt came up in his bike gear to say goodbye. Then mentioned something that I had to put on the calendar, which made me want to check something else online, which required opening my browser window, which opened up to a cool blogging personality that I wanted to check out. Jeez, this is the age of ultimate distraction.

Back to my previous train of thought… Donald Miller’s book is the story of the process of him writing the script for a movie that’s sort of based on a previous best selling book he wrote, and that book is all about his life, so the movie is supposed to be about his life too. He learns that making a movie requires things that the book doesn’t and in the process of writing a more interesting role for himself in the movie, he starts leading a more interesting life – he starts taking chances, gives himself obstacles to overcome.

That I end up reading books that actually are about the process of writing is interesting… those writing books just seam to sneak themselves on to my nightstands. And I do mean nightstands… I’m forever moving from the top-of-the-house bedroom, to the basement bedroom… and I’ve got books all over the place. That’s another story.

But, both the authors I just mentioned, I stumbled upon on Amazon, and based on great reviews, searched for their books on the library site (I gotta refrain from my book buying habit on Amazon). Of course then, the books that I ended up getting from the library aren’t the authors’ most recent, but they both happen to have a writing theme… which reminds me of the time a few months ago when a book was mysteriously mis-delivered to my house from Barnes & Noble and it was a guide to Better Business Writing. Oh universe, I’ll take your hint.

So, that’s it, and this is why, if you are reading this, that I decided to post this on the great big ‘ole inter-web. This was just a diary entry, but why not? I’m just gonna write on. There it is, done.

P. S.

I guess I know what my next diary entry should be… an entry describing the past 10 years using just 3 word sentences. We’ll see what comes up.